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Community Corner

Brooklyn Boheme Chronicles Fort Greene's Artistic Peak

Filmmaker Nelson George gives insight into the neighborhood that brought you Spike Lee and Wesley Snipes, among others

From Spike Lee to Erykah Badu, Fort Greene has been responsible for producing some of the most successful Black artists in pop culture, and a soon to be released documentary chronicles the window in the neighborhood’s history where these success stories lived within blocks of each other.

Local filmmaker Nelson George is in the post-production stages of his latest documentary, Brooklyn Boheme, with the film set to be released by the end of the year. The movie is an expansion of sections from his 2009 book, City Kid: A Writer's Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success," that also touched on the emerging world of artists in Fort Greene from the mid-80s to late-90s.

“When I started doing the events to promote the book, people were most interested in that period,” said George. “I thought it was important to fully document that era.”

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A Fort Greene resident for the last 26 years, George moved here in 1985 while working as a music editor for Billboard. Shortly after arriving, he became friends with then-burgeoning filmmaker Spike Lee, who lived two blocks away from George on Adelphi St. and Myrtle Ave.

“I actually loaned him a few hundred bucks at one time, because we were all scrambling and I was the only one who had a real job,” said George. “Spike had a meeting with me because he wanted to get involved in music videos, but he wasn’t ever able to crack through in that field.”

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Shortly after, Lee gained national acclaim with his debut film, She’s Gotta Have It. Several of the dream sequences from the movie were even filmed in George’s first apartment in the neighborhood on Willoughby St. and Carlton Ave.

George said that Lee’s national praise as a “Black Woody Allen” was the catalyst for Fort Greene’s arts community to take off. 

“This was a place where you didn’t feel limited,” said George. “People began to think that if he can shoot a movie, then I can compose a song, or I can write a book.”

Over the next two decades, actor Wesley Snipes, comedian Chris Rock, and hip-hop artists Mos Def and Common, among others, emerged as stars while living in the neighborhood. Several of them stuck around for several years afterwards. 

George cited the cheap rent at the time and close proximity to Manhattan as two of the primary reasons why such a successful arts community in Fort Greene was possible.

“The punks on the Lower East Side in the 1980s were living in these hovels for just under $1,000, but I was able to live in a duplex with wood floors and a garden for the same price,” said George.

In addition to a higher quality of life, George also said the type of art coming out of Fort Greene was radically different than what was being produced in lower Manhattan.

“A lot of the punk and new wave that was coming out of Manhattan when I was first moved here was pretty angry,” said  George. “We had critiques of politics and race, but it wasn’t angry. It was about people dealing with complexities of race and identity and sex.”

By the late 90s, the arts community in Fort Greene was still visible, but had quieted down somewhat. Citing privacy issues, Lee and Rock moved out of the neighborhood, and several of the other celebrities that emerged from Fort Greene followed.

George said that while he doesn’t rule out Fort Greene having another arts renaissance, there are other areas of Brooklyn experiencing a similar boom to Fort Greene’s two-decade run.

“When I think of young Black artists these days, I think that Bed-Stuy is becoming for Black artists what Williamsburg has become for emerging white artists,” said George. “That being said, there’s definitely still a Black presence in Fort Greene, so of course it’s possible that this sort of hugely successful arts community could happen again.” 

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